On Anna Howe

Anna is a feminine given name, the Latin form of the Greek: Ἄννα and the Hebrew name Hannah(Hebrew: חַנָּה, romanized: Ḥannāh), meaning “favour” or “grace”. – Wiki

I think you told me, sir, you never saw Miss Howe. She is a fine graceful young lady. A fixed melancholy on her whole aspect overclouded a vivacity and fire, which nevertheless darted now and then through the awful gloom. I shall ever respect her for her love to my dear cousin.

Never did I think, said she as she gave me her hand, to enter more these doors: but, living or dead, my Clarissa brings me after her anywhither!

She entered with me the little parlour. The moment she saw the coffin, she withdrew her hand from mine, and with impatience pushed aside the lid. As impatiently she removed the face-cloth. In a wild air, she clasped her uplifted hands together; and now looked upon the corpse, now up to Heaven as if appealing her woes to that. Her bosom heaved and fluttered discernible through her handkerchief, and at last she broke silence: Oh sir!—see you not here!—see you there-the glory of her sex?-thus by the most villainous of yours – thus – laid low! Ah, my blessed friend, said she! my sweet companion!— Anna Howe before the coffin at Harlowe Place, from Clarissa.

Women will have, whether by kin or soul, their sisters. Our Lady upon the Annunciation sought for directly her dear St. Elizabeth. Contrarily, that Hillary Clinton was described by the Shield Maidens during her Presidential run as “a woman but not a sister” must have stung deeply and struck home that cold poison pump of a heart. Clarissa’s glorious Anna Howe is among the first, and inarguably the best, of art’s saucy female friends. The feminine sauce-box soulmate will be portrayed throughout the subsequent three centuries since the publication of Clarissa, but none reach the grandeur of Miss Anna. Perhaps the highest compliment to Anna is that the perfidious Lovelace knows her to be his most dangerous foe, for Anna’s ferocious love for her dear Clarissa will not be brooked. At the fateful ball near the novel’s end, Lovelace and Anna meet for the first time since the totality of his evil has been revealed. The scene is the most beautiful, near allegory, of virtue’s consideration of the demonic. Bunyan could never. Miss Howe wishes nothing to do with Sir Lovelace, and she seats herself far removed in the corner to obviate his advances. Terrifyingly he suddenly appears – unseen by Anna – behind her seat, bending to her bejeweled ear while whispering, “I ask only 15 minutes with you.” Much may happen in 15 minutes, and Miss Howe isn’t here to play his reckless game. She is momentarily unnerved until she remembers her dear Clarissa. Virtue may flee until virtue must fight. Anna stands, directing herself to the exit. Lovelace attempts to detain her as she reaches the door to leave the demon to his admirers. Softly grasping her arm: “I ask, again, only 15 minutes.” Anna snapping open her fan, “accidentally” dislodging Mr. Lovelace’s impeccable wig in a mushroom cloud of hair powder before an entranced gaped-mouth ballroom is the supreme crushing of the serpent’s head in all of literature. It is also very wise advice for us when our own snakes touch our arm, imploring “just 15 minutes.” May God grant us all our own Miss Howe. And, as Clarissa most certainly was, may we be worthy of her.

Reading 2025, A Selection and Best Of

The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser – I figured I’d finish it sometime around 2034 when the Cenobites manifest. I could not put it down and finished all 18 trillion pages of it just shy of 3 weeks. Britomart – picture Samus Aran become Strider (Genesis version, IYKYK) – and Belphoebe are two of the most enchanting female war machines in all of literature. The sections on Despair and the Bower of Bliss bury all but a handful of GOAT’s.

”Christabel,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge – anyone who has unhappily woken up, scales dropped, to realize this one being he has loved above all others only and only gives hugs that hurt knows the temptation: flee with abandon to the forest of angst or raise with quickness the bridge. The more the hug, the more and more the hurt. Is this, can this even be, love? Hugs that hurt as vampiric lesbianism.

On the Lapsed, St. Cyprian – anyone troubled with my tone should take a gander at Sts. Cyprian and Jerome and get back to me.

The Rainbow, D. H. Lawrence – it’s about 25 pages long and took me longer to read than the The Faerie Queene. One does not thrill to Lawrence. Once goes to him as some go to the dentist. Still, the scene of Ursula and Skrebensky on the nighttime fantasmagoric sands of the doomed riverbed of Lethe is among the most heartbreaking I’ve ever read. I nearly cried. This scene, my word this scene, is nothing less than the ravages of modernity itself condensed and presented to the perceptual level. I have a screenshot of it and gaze whenever the demons get too close.

”Howl,” Allen Ginsberg – the Beats are like if Australia and Alanis Morisette got married and spawned the literary version of a Damien Thorn who decided to eat a rusted bucket load of shrooms and try his clawed hand at a poem.

Collected Poems, Emily Dickinson – the original goth chick. Witchy woman needed some sunlight and a Michelob.

Pamela, Samuel Richardson – how does one invent in the same work both the modern and the post-modern?

Symposium, Plato – I read it every year. Plato drinks you under the table (literally) and then walks home at dawn. Tl;dr: Plato >>>> Aristotle.

Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy – Nietzsche once said somewhere or other that the scandal of Christianity is that Christ first resurrected and then died. This is not even in the ballpark of sanity; yet in Blood Meridian McCarthy terrifies us with his Big Bang as Apocalypse. The End and then the Beginning. The Judge will never die. Some say he never sleeps. The Judge will never die. Some say…